TranceFire ~ The all singing all dancing Mac mini Slice!
Well I suppose that once enough of those "pills" kick in, I'd be moved to take the dance floor like John Travolta, but chances of that aside, you have defined a very nice niche set of slices. And ++ points for graphic work on this entrant.
TranceFire ~ The all singing all dancing Mac mini Slice!
Well I suppose that once enough of those "pills" kick in, I'd be moved to take the dance floor like John Travolta, but chances of that aside, you have defined a very nice niche set of slices. And ++ points for graphic work on this entrant.
thanks aph
oh, and i've been off the pills for a year now... the music and people and sex and stuff do it for me nowadays
yeah i just went ultracore-minimalist with the graphix i was a bit lazy to put in any knobs and lcds and stuff but it seems to have worked out better in the end
Holy moly are you guys in left field with this Mac Mini xGrid stuff... we're months away from quad PowerMacs (two dual core chips) and Power5 based units are likley within a year and you are excited about hooking up two or more single unit 1.25 GHz G4's?
Soooo... you're suggesting that I load 4 copies of Bryce into my single dual core PowerMac? Unfortunately, Bryce Lightning it won't interoperate that way. It only works on multiple independent machines, as I understand it.
Or, install multiple Photosops into one tower? So I could Batch process one while doing assembly with the other?
Would this work? Not so sure.
And, as the current high-end machine retails (base RAM) at about 3K, I could get 6 Minis for the same coin.
All I'm saying is, hmmmm...
Plus, as we keep forgetting, a G4 machine is a pretty powerful computer... or at least it was marketed as a Supercomputer when it debuted.
I discovered the an interesting take on The Mac Mini Platform today and thought I'd give this thread a bump by posting it. From the link:
Quote:
Ubiquitous computing or Apple as consumer electronic giant
Ubiquitous computing has long been a dream but Apple may be working on it. Notice how they tend to look at the PC world: ugly boxes, bad design, etc... The only company that seems to scare them a little is Sony. Why Sony?
Well, because Sony is a consumer electronic giant and that's where Apple wants to play. At the end of the day, Steve Jobs realizes that the days of Apple as a computer company are numbered. However, the company can reinvent itself as a consumer electronics giant.
This is where the mini goes. It's not really a computer but it may be the second front in the battle for consumer electronic supremacy.
I can already hear nay-sayers going "But Steve always says that there is no play for Video..."
If that's truly the case, explain the work on Quicktime? Explain why the company continues to invest in products like iLife and Final Cut (and its express version)?
The truth is that up until last week, Steve Jobs was on the record poo-pooing the flash MP3 player market (that is, until he introduced an Apple branded one.)
At the end of the day, what he's building with the mini is a platform, not just offering a new product.
Also there is some great information about the Mac mini at This Site
It would seem that the Mac mini is a runaway best seller, the online Apple Store is at a 3 to 4 week shipping delay and reports are coming in that the Apple Stores (brick and mortar) had lines forming before opening and that the Mac minis were sold out in the first hour.
This will help establish the Mac mini as a platform that third party manufacturers will rally around with Slices to add to the phenomenal success of this new Macintosh.
While I have doubts, what I really like about the Cringley article, and why I think he "gets it" is because he specifically dismisses the TV fantasy. His speculation is the most compelling because he found a place for Apple to innovate (meaning to make accessible and compelling) in the HD delivery market. His point about no one having real control or momentum in that market is quite right. The usual cabal of companies control both TV and non-HD movie content, but everyone is really slow out of the gate with regard to this HD transition, particularly with movies, even cable PPV.
I can accept the guess/hope that H.264 makes both downloads of HD movie content (say, 2 hours playback of just 720p, not even 1080i) practical over consumer broadband, and that with QT 7, it can be played back on the Mac mini's current hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if that's just a bit too optimistic though.
"While H.264 is a computationally advanced codec, it runs on today?s shipping computers with no additional hardware required. For example, a full HD movie (1920x1080, 8 Mbps, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 plays back beautifully on a dual Power Mac G5. Internet-sized content (40kbps - 300kbps) will run on the most basic of processors, like those in mobile phones and consumer-level computers."
It takes a dual G5 to play back 1080i/1080p? I think Apple is going to have to discuss video card decode assist with ATI and nVidia. The other two codecs being put into HD are much less resource hungry. With a Radeon, an 800MHz PC can decode 1080i coded as MPEG-2, without a Radeon, it is 1.6GHz. A 3GHz single CPU x86 system can play back 1080p WMV-HD without issue.
If my $200 STB can decode a 1080i HD signal, am I meant to believe that a decent G4 cannot? I can hardly believe that my RCA DirecTV HD receiver is that powerful...
If my $200 STB can decode a 1080i HD signal, am I meant to believe that a decent G4 cannot? I can hardly believe that my RCA DirecTV HD receiver is that powerful...
ummm... not that your HD receiver is so powerful, but it has some dedicated chips designed to run those HD-decoding instructions. whereas the G4 is designed to run multiple kinds of instructions. dedicated hardware will normally beat out a computer CPU at a dedicated task
Yes you are right. However H.264 in Quicktime 7 will allow a stone stock Mac mini to display TV at DVD resolution. To get Hi Def TV on the Mac mini a similarly cheap Mini Slice will be needed to decode the HD signal and pass it via firewire to the host computer.
Could the first Mini Slice be the rumored "Asteroid" device from Apple, shown and released at NAB? It makes perfect sense to me that Apple has plans to make this the "Year of HD" by releasing such a product.
The Mac mini was not put together in a vacuum, Apple plans to capitalize on the Mac mini as a platform to launch other complimenting products with higher margins to keep their overall profit levels in the high 20% range.
Now, if only I could figure out how to adjust/eliminate the overscan on my Hitachi 50VS810 HDTV either via the set or through the Mac (ResolutionX; DisplayConfigX) I'd be a very happy camper.
Now, if only I could figure out how to adjust/eliminate the overscan on my Hitachi 50VS810 HDTV either via the set or through the Mac (ResolutionX; DisplayConfigX) I'd be a very happy camper.
For, that sort of thing you really need to get into the service menu of the TV. No Mac or PC is going to "fix" that without digitally downscaling the image, which can have negative impact on the picture. Using a computer to downscale doesn't fix the other inputs either.
If you aren't a tweaker, I don't recommend going into the service menu, but it will get you the best results.
Could the first Mini Slice be the rumored "Asteroid" device from Apple, shown and released at NAB? It makes perfect sense to me that Apple has plans to make this the "Year of HD" by releasing such a product.
is asteroid to be released at NAB or NAMM? if NAB, it's video related forr shurre, if NAMM, its an Audio breakout box that undercuts m-audio's very very popular boxes (m-audios gear is rock solid just works, frequently released drivers, excellent value for money)
For, that sort of thing you really need to get into the service menu of the TV. No Mac or PC is going to "fix" that without digitally downscaling the image, which can have negative impact on the picture. Using a computer to downscale doesn't fix the other inputs either.
If you aren't a tweaker, I don't recommend going into the service menu, but it will get you the best results.
Actually its a good sign that the signal being generated falls outside of the specification of the TV. There are all sorts of ways to control the timing for signal position, its not just image data in the stream. There is plenty of blank space used for horizontal and vertical timing.
Unfortunately I dont know how to edit that timing on a mac. On X11 its pretty easy, just edit the xconfig file.
Actually its a good sign that the signal being generated falls outside of the specification of the TV.
Correction, for TVs, there is signal AND a fair bit of the image falls outside of the display area. Unlike computer monitors (specifically CRT), the vertical and horizontal scan sweep distances can't be controlled from the video card.
Quote:
There are all sorts of ways to control the timing for signal position, its not just image data in the stream. There is plenty of blank space used for horizontal and vertical timing.
No, the image itself is actually overscanned by a significant margin, and there is significant blank area beyond the active image area for the timings.
The reasoning for overscanning is that the projected image on TVs shrinks as the TV ages. What happens is that 10% of the left edge of the image is off the screen, and the same goes for the right, top and bottom edges. If you've done any video editing or titling, this is what the "safe area" is about - to make sure what you write actually ends up on the TV.
In the service menu of many TVs, the scan width and scan hight can be reduced to minimize this. What a lot of computer TV cards to is use less of the image area, so an NTSC TV acts as maybe a 512x380 monitor unless this overscan is corrected in the TV and the video card's overscan compensation is turned off. Even if the video card *claims* it is outputting 800x600 it really is downscaling the image. When corrected, the TV stands a chance of being a real VGA monitor, though interlaced.
Quote:
Unfortunately I dont know how to edit that timing on a mac. On X11 its pretty easy, just edit the xconfig file.
The person I replied to mentioned a couple things that might work. It is best not to assume a TV behaves well as a monitor, it needs to be tweaked. The HDTV standard has less overscan, but it is still a bit of an issue. Sadly, even fixed pixel displays (LCD, DLP, plasma) have overscan set into them when fed a TV signal, unless it is corrected.
I was thinking that maybe Apple could come up with an iRAID mini utilizing the Apple Drive Modules found in the "real" server hardware. Too bad, they did not implemt FW800 or external SATA (II) connectivity.
Does anyone know by chance what the measurements of an ADM are and what the neccessary backplane looks like?
I really dig the "slices" concept and hope that a lot of the peripheral makers hop on.
Is Apple developing a counterpoint to the Mac Mini? A new high-end workstation Mac with a "full-height" tower case, more expansion room than a PowerMac, and early-adopter features like DDR2-533 memory, PCI Express, as well as IBM POWER5-class processors has been spied in prototype form by reliable sources.
This stackable mac is a great idea. Even if it was never the intent of Apple to create such a product, I think they'll quickly adopt the idea.
To truly accomplish the task, however, I would suggest two modifications to the Mini.
First, I'd redesign the bottom to allow secure stacking of "slices" while maintining some airflow. This modification would marginally increase the height of the mini, but wouldn't anticipate that an increase of 1/4 - 1/2 inch would detract from the mini's form factor.
The second modification should be the addition of firewire 800. With a purposely extensible platform, you want to ensure bandwith isn't a problem. If you're inputing video through one slice, moving it two a second slice, while copying files from a third slice, a little extra bandwith would be nice.
First, I'd redesign the bottom to allow secure stacking of "slices" while maintining some airflow. This modification would marginally increase the height of the mini, but wouldn't anticipate that an increase of 1/4 - 1/2 inch would detract from the mini's form factor.
Are you sure this is needed (or could not be taken care of by the "slices'" manufacturers? Here are my reasons:
- the Mac mini is designed to ensure proper airflow when placed on a flat surface,
- to accomplish this goal, the lower edge does not touch the ground (see here for photos),
- a matching recess could be molded into the add-on case's top cover just deep enough to ensure that the mini stays in place and still leaving a gap high enough to ensure proper airflow.
Quote:
Originally posted by Ompus
The second modification should be the addition of firewire 800. With a purposely extensible platform, you want to ensure bandwith isn't a problem. If you're inputing video through one slice, moving it two a second slice, while copying files from a third slice, a little extra bandwith would be nice.
So true, see my post above. How expensive might adding additional ports (just the interconnects) be? They could have added a port into the bottom that carries PCI (maybe even the express flavour) like they are used in notebooks to connect them to docking stations.
Comments
Well I suppose that once enough of those "pills" kick in, I'd be moved to take the dance floor like John Travolta, but chances of that aside, you have defined a very nice niche set of slices. And ++ points for graphic work on this entrant.
Originally posted by Aphelion
TranceFire ~ The all singing all dancing Mac mini Slice!
Well I suppose that once enough of those "pills" kick in, I'd be moved to take the dance floor like John Travolta, but chances of that aside, you have defined a very nice niche set of slices. And ++ points for graphic work on this entrant.
thanks aph
oh, and i've been off the pills for a year now... the music and people and sex and stuff do it for me nowadays
yeah i just went ultracore-minimalist with the graphix i was a bit lazy to put in any knobs and lcds and stuff but it seems to have worked out better in the end
Originally posted by jaslu81
Holy moly are you guys in left field with this Mac Mini xGrid stuff... we're months away from quad PowerMacs (two dual core chips) and Power5 based units are likley within a year and you are excited about hooking up two or more single unit 1.25 GHz G4's?
Soooo... you're suggesting that I load 4 copies of Bryce into my single dual core PowerMac? Unfortunately, Bryce Lightning it won't interoperate that way. It only works on multiple independent machines, as I understand it.
Or, install multiple Photosops into one tower? So I could Batch process one while doing assembly with the other?
Would this work? Not so sure.
And, as the current high-end machine retails (base RAM) at about 3K, I could get 6 Minis for the same coin.
All I'm saying is, hmmmm...
Plus, as we keep forgetting, a G4 machine is a pretty powerful computer... or at least it was marketed as a Supercomputer when it debuted.
Ubiquitous computing or Apple as consumer electronic giant
Ubiquitous computing has long been a dream but Apple may be working on it. Notice how they tend to look at the PC world: ugly boxes, bad design, etc... The only company that seems to scare them a little is Sony. Why Sony?
Well, because Sony is a consumer electronic giant and that's where Apple wants to play. At the end of the day, Steve Jobs realizes that the days of Apple as a computer company are numbered. However, the company can reinvent itself as a consumer electronics giant.
This is where the mini goes. It's not really a computer but it may be the second front in the battle for consumer electronic supremacy.
I can already hear nay-sayers going "But Steve always says that there is no play for Video..."
If that's truly the case, explain the work on Quicktime? Explain why the company continues to invest in products like iLife and Final Cut (and its express version)?
The truth is that up until last week, Steve Jobs was on the record poo-pooing the flash MP3 player market (that is, until he introduced an Apple branded one.)
At the end of the day, what he's building with the mini is a platform, not just offering a new product.
Also there is some great information about the Mac mini at This Site
It would seem that the Mac mini is a runaway best seller, the online Apple Store is at a 3 to 4 week shipping delay and reports are coming in that the Apple Stores (brick and mortar) had lines forming before opening and that the Mac minis were sold out in the first hour.
This will help establish the Mac mini as a platform that third party manufacturers will rally around with Slices to add to the phenomenal success of this new Macintosh.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050120.html
I can accept the guess/hope that H.264 makes both downloads of HD movie content (say, 2 hours playback of just 720p, not even 1080i) practical over consumer broadband, and that with QT 7, it can be played back on the Mac mini's current hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if that's just a bit too optimistic though.
Originally posted by spacemonk
Check out latest Cringely article:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050120.html
Well all those new Mac mini owners are going to be needed to make the Apple Movie Store a success.
Originally posted by jaslu81
Home theater on a mini?
"While H.264 is a computationally advanced codec, it runs on today?s shipping computers with no additional hardware required. For example, a full HD movie (1920x1080, 8 Mbps, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 plays back beautifully on a dual Power Mac G5. Internet-sized content (40kbps - 300kbps) will run on the most basic of processors, like those in mobile phones and consumer-level computers."
It takes a dual G5 to play back 1080i/1080p? I think Apple is going to have to discuss video card decode assist with ATI and nVidia. The other two codecs being put into HD are much less resource hungry. With a Radeon, an 800MHz PC can decode 1080i coded as MPEG-2, without a Radeon, it is 1.6GHz. A 3GHz single CPU x86 system can play back 1080p WMV-HD without issue.
Originally posted by Sport73
If my $200 STB can decode a 1080i HD signal, am I meant to believe that a decent G4 cannot? I can hardly believe that my RCA DirecTV HD receiver is that powerful...
ummm... not that your HD receiver is so powerful, but it has some dedicated chips designed to run those HD-decoding instructions. whereas the G4 is designed to run multiple kinds of instructions. dedicated hardware will normally beat out a computer CPU at a dedicated task
am i right guys?
Originally posted by sunilraman
ummm... am i right guys?
Yes you are right. However H.264 in Quicktime 7 will allow a stone stock Mac mini to display TV at DVD resolution. To get Hi Def TV on the Mac mini a similarly cheap Mini Slice will be needed to decode the HD signal and pass it via firewire to the host computer.
Could the first Mini Slice be the rumored "Asteroid" device from Apple, shown and released at NAB? It makes perfect sense to me that Apple has plans to make this the "Year of HD" by releasing such a product.
The Mac mini was not put together in a vacuum, Apple plans to capitalize on the Mac mini as a platform to launch other complimenting products with higher margins to keep their overall profit levels in the high 20% range.
Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?
Originally posted by Sport73
Now, if only I could figure out how to adjust/eliminate the overscan on my Hitachi 50VS810 HDTV either via the set or through the Mac (ResolutionX; DisplayConfigX) I'd be a very happy camper.
For, that sort of thing you really need to get into the service menu of the TV. No Mac or PC is going to "fix" that without digitally downscaling the image, which can have negative impact on the picture. Using a computer to downscale doesn't fix the other inputs either.
If you aren't a tweaker, I don't recommend going into the service menu, but it will get you the best results.
Originally posted by Aphelion
Could the first Mini Slice be the rumored "Asteroid" device from Apple, shown and released at NAB? It makes perfect sense to me that Apple has plans to make this the "Year of HD" by releasing such a product.
http://www.m-audio.com
ummm... okay, NAMM just wrapped... and no sign of asteroid
...the plot thickenssss
Originally posted by JeffDM
For, that sort of thing you really need to get into the service menu of the TV. No Mac or PC is going to "fix" that without digitally downscaling the image, which can have negative impact on the picture. Using a computer to downscale doesn't fix the other inputs either.
If you aren't a tweaker, I don't recommend going into the service menu, but it will get you the best results.
Actually its a good sign that the signal being generated falls outside of the specification of the TV. There are all sorts of ways to control the timing for signal position, its not just image data in the stream. There is plenty of blank space used for horizontal and vertical timing.
Unfortunately I dont know how to edit that timing on a mac. On X11 its pretty easy, just edit the xconfig file.
Originally posted by mmmpie
Actually its a good sign that the signal being generated falls outside of the specification of the TV.
Correction, for TVs, there is signal AND a fair bit of the image falls outside of the display area. Unlike computer monitors (specifically CRT), the vertical and horizontal scan sweep distances can't be controlled from the video card.
There are all sorts of ways to control the timing for signal position, its not just image data in the stream. There is plenty of blank space used for horizontal and vertical timing.
No, the image itself is actually overscanned by a significant margin, and there is significant blank area beyond the active image area for the timings.
The reasoning for overscanning is that the projected image on TVs shrinks as the TV ages. What happens is that 10% of the left edge of the image is off the screen, and the same goes for the right, top and bottom edges. If you've done any video editing or titling, this is what the "safe area" is about - to make sure what you write actually ends up on the TV.
In the service menu of many TVs, the scan width and scan hight can be reduced to minimize this. What a lot of computer TV cards to is use less of the image area, so an NTSC TV acts as maybe a 512x380 monitor unless this overscan is corrected in the TV and the video card's overscan compensation is turned off. Even if the video card *claims* it is outputting 800x600 it really is downscaling the image. When corrected, the TV stands a chance of being a real VGA monitor, though interlaced.
Unfortunately I dont know how to edit that timing on a mac. On X11 its pretty easy, just edit the xconfig file.
The person I replied to mentioned a couple things that might work. It is best not to assume a TV behaves well as a monitor, it needs to be tweaked. The HDTV standard has less overscan, but it is still a bit of an issue. Sadly, even fixed pixel displays (LCD, DLP, plasma) have overscan set into them when fed a TV signal, unless it is corrected.
Does anyone know by chance what the measurements of an ADM are and what the neccessary backplane looks like?
I really dig the "slices" concept and hope that a lot of the peripheral makers hop on.
Is Apple developing a counterpoint to the Mac Mini? A new high-end workstation Mac with a "full-height" tower case, more expansion room than a PowerMac, and early-adopter features like DDR2-533 memory, PCI Express, as well as IBM POWER5-class processors has been spied in prototype form by reliable sources.
from macosrumours,com
i know they are, the cube reborn
To truly accomplish the task, however, I would suggest two modifications to the Mini.
First, I'd redesign the bottom to allow secure stacking of "slices" while maintining some airflow. This modification would marginally increase the height of the mini, but wouldn't anticipate that an increase of 1/4 - 1/2 inch would detract from the mini's form factor.
The second modification should be the addition of firewire 800. With a purposely extensible platform, you want to ensure bandwith isn't a problem. If you're inputing video through one slice, moving it two a second slice, while copying files from a third slice, a little extra bandwith would be nice.
Originally posted by Ompus
First, I'd redesign the bottom to allow secure stacking of "slices" while maintining some airflow. This modification would marginally increase the height of the mini, but wouldn't anticipate that an increase of 1/4 - 1/2 inch would detract from the mini's form factor.
Are you sure this is needed (or could not be taken care of by the "slices'" manufacturers? Here are my reasons:
- the Mac mini is designed to ensure proper airflow when placed on a flat surface,
- to accomplish this goal, the lower edge does not touch the ground (see here for photos),
- a matching recess could be molded into the add-on case's top cover just deep enough to ensure that the mini stays in place and still leaving a gap high enough to ensure proper airflow.
Originally posted by Ompus
The second modification should be the addition of firewire 800. With a purposely extensible platform, you want to ensure bandwith isn't a problem. If you're inputing video through one slice, moving it two a second slice, while copying files from a third slice, a little extra bandwith would be nice.
So true, see my post above. How expensive might adding additional ports (just the interconnects) be? They could have added a port into the bottom that carries PCI (maybe even the express flavour) like they are used in notebooks to connect them to docking stations.